Kent League - Senior Women win again! Tonbridge Cross Country

Senior Women

Holly Dixon and Kate Curran continued their impressive form in the Kent League by again taking first and second place at Somerhill. Both completely outclassed their rivals maintaining a fast pace throughout including on all six hills and finishing in 30 minutes. Megan Marchant was the third CH home in seventh place. These performances ensured victory in the team of three competition. In the team of six competition excellent runs from Katie Sanders (16th), Julie Backley (23rd) and Hayley Newman (33rd) resulted in second place to Tonbridge.

Once again thirteen ladies turned out including Hannah Whitefield who made her cross country debut straight in at the deep end. We are at long last beginning to get some very encouraging depth in the senior women's squad with good numbers of all ages and abilities.

Holly Dixon 1st place

Kate Curran 2nd Place

1 Holly Dixon 30:10

2 Kate Curran 30:47

7 Megan Marchant 32:37

16 Katie Sanders 34:44

23 Julie Backley35:34

33 Hayley Newman 36:36

37 Sophie Parkes 36:57

58 Christine Bond 39:44

69 Donna Martin 40:34

72 Hannah Whitefield 40:56

83 Sally Carr 42:11

94 Monica Whitefield 43:43

106 Alice Bodie 49:07

Megan Merchant

Katie Sanders

Senior Men

With recent news of fuels delivery problems, empty supermarket shelves and limited toys for Christmas, Supply Chain management and just-in-time delivery has been a hot topic. Well, the clubs’ Senior Men demonstrated perfect just-in-time delivery on Saturday 23rd October for the second Kent League Cross event at Tonbridge. With 20 minutes before the start, the team only had eight runners, way below the 12-to-score team requirement. With just 10 minutes to spare, Dean Lacy and Luke Ford arrived and we (just) completed the team. This was especially good news for Mark Cross, Mark Newell and Chris Hovenden, all recovering from illness and injury, who were almost press-ganged into running to make-up the team. With several club runners unavailable for this event, the team dropped to fourth place in both the 4-to-score and 12-to-score team placings. It was good to see Peter Reynolds take part in his first cross country race for the club as he will be an asset to the Senior Men’s team.

The course itself was firm all round with a few soggy areas. The shorter distance was welcomed by most with a long hill and steep bank. The post race warm down consisted of an upper body workout to extricate a tent peg stuck in a tree root, helped by Luke Ford who kept appearing with an ever increasing selection of implements.

Dean Lacy was the first Cambridge Harrier home in 17th place, closely followed by Chris Loudon who is running well and continues to impress at cross country.

17 Dean Lacy 28.13

19 Chris Loudon 28:21

29 Angus Vosper 29:15

58 Peter Reynolds 31:08

66 Luke Ford 31:31

73 Mark Penny 31:56

80 Steven Groom 32:15

84 Duncan Hope 32:31

89 Christian Poulton 32:58

97 Tarbo Fukazawa 33:18

125 Graham Maynard 34:26

205 Martin Hawkins 39:19

246 Patrick Austin 43:43

Dean Lacy

Chris Loudon

Youth Section

We had sixteen turn out for our younger age groups. Our numbers were slightly down from the previous weekend as it was the start of half term and many athletes were away on holiday.

Our under 13 girls started the day off and possibly produced the best performance of the day with Iris William's recording a superb first place in an intelligently run race. Celia Yeatman and Anagha Pai ran solid races to complete the team event. Having tripped and retired from last weekends race it was good to see Alannah Bonnar cross the line to finish this one. Joshua Wellings ran another solid race to place 8th overall in the under 13 boys race with Aniket Iyengar, Oliver Cook and Oliver Hill being our other finishers.

In the under 15 events we only had two in each of the girls and boys events. Amelia Lawrence produced a fine performance in the girls race to finish in 9th place.

In the under 17 women's even it was good to see Isabella Richard's make her first cross country outing this season for the club, finishing in 22nd place. Inez Rice finished one place behind Isabella in 23rd position. In the under 17 men's race, Jonathan Idowu and Jake Chea competed in their first race for the club finishing 30th and 34th respectively.

Iris Williams just before she took the lead to finish in 1st place